Comment by jen20
6 days ago
I suspect there's more to it in than that.
I'd wager there was a solid amount of general incompetence involved at the PO "corporate" - management politically couldn't admit that their consultingware could be anything other than perfect, because they signed off on the decision to buy it, and probably on all the work orders that got them to that point.
If anyone from PO management or that of the consulting firm (Fujitsu, I believe?) ever get any work again, it will be a travesty of justice.
I regret to inform you that not only is Fujitsu not banned from UK government work, they're not even banned from continuing the same project https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/03/17/business-and-ind...
There has been a lot of questions just in the last few days about Fujitsu continuing to bid for government contracts even when they said they wouldn’t. A random google result https://www.politico.eu/article/post-office-scandal-hit-fuji...
Wow. That is the kind of thing that every reasonable person should be calling their MP's office about daily.
What do you mean? The government very strongly responded to this scandal, including having the person directly responsible, who instructed the post office to hide proof of the postmaster's innocence, appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
She has since been thrown under the bus, though, of course, not prosecuted or imprisoned (despite ordering wrongful prosecutions of over 900 others)
The politician responsible for her was Vince Cable, who since became leader of the Liberal Democrats, and holds 10 positions, most of which are either funded by the government or related to it.
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Yes at some point it turned into CYA. When the leadership started realizing that there were problems with the software they started doubling down, getting even more aggressive with prosecutions, because they were trying to hide their own fuckups.
But when the ball started rolling, as the software rolled out and was finding missing funds everywhere, you'd think a normal person would have asked "are we sure there are no bugs here?" That was never done, I believe, because the software was matching the leadership's priors.
> That was never done, I believe, because the software was matching the leadership's priors.
That has to be the most egregious confirmation bias I've heard about.
what's the mistake of fujitsu here ? we all know how software is made and that bugs happen and if nobody reports them they never get fixed